100/100

[originally written on my blog]

I don't understand how you make a film that looks like this and then go on to make 32 subsequent films (and counting) that look nothing like this. But then, neither do I understand how you achieve the perfect synthesis of your many gifts and somehow conclude that you totally whiffed, to the point where you beg the studio to destroy the negative. Each of the film's tricky balancing acts—between visual beauty and verbal dexterity, between wit and pathos, between the specific and the universal—couldn't be more sublimely realized; like most every masterpiece, it's a tiny, insular story that nonetheless embodies human folly at its most ubiquitous and grandiose. That Woody chooses to make…

“Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat—oh, I love this. New York was his town, and it always would be.”

Is life fundamentally sweet or sour? Depends on your point of view, I suppose. You get a new job, make a new friend, fall in love—life is honeyed and worth living. You lose that job, have a falling out with that friend, fall out of love—life is curdled and should be thrown out. The funny thing is, those circumstances don’t parcel themselves out discretely. They tend to coexist. You get a promotion but have a fight with your spouse about the…

I expected Manhattan was like, an indisputably great piece of art. I thought that I might love it in spite of myself and that I would have to think really hard about whether something with morally problematic elements or something made by an reprehensible person should also be valued for its artistic merits. But then I watched it and I genuinely did not see the appeal. What is so special about this movie? Do people really find this funny, romantic, or endearing in any way? Am I supposed to believe for one second that Woody Allen is the suave, uber-sexy being he apparently believes himself to be? A fourty-something man feels weird about dating a high-school girl, not because he's…

"He adored New York City"

durante a pré adolescência, eu nutri fascínio pela cidade de Nova York. lia artigos e artigos sobre a cidade e conheço a maior parte dos seus cantos, mesmo nunca tendo pisado lá. e é algo que dura até hoje mesmo que sem o romantismo juvenil.

por isso Manhattan é um deleite para mim, pois retrata o fervor, a magia e as contradições dessa cidade e do que ela representa. a fotografia em preto e branco de Gordon Willis arranca imagens estupendas desse lugar, enquanto que Rhapsody in Blue do George Gershwin acompanha o seu ritmo frenético.

"You have to have a little faith in people"

um lugar tão hipnótico é o pano de fundo para…